


No Room For Wilted Flowers

by kyluxtrashcompactor



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Academy Era, First Meetings, Future Emperor Hux, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Young Ben Solo, Young Hux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-11 04:54:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7029466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyluxtrashcompactor/pseuds/kyluxtrashcompactor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They would both one day shape the history of entire cultures, influence galactic politics, and have an empire at their feet. Behind all such men, there are trials and glory, bloodshed and skeletons in dark closets. But there is always a beginning, steeped in a significance that is only recognizable from a great distance of time: a time when a seed becomes a flower, to flourish or wilt.</p><p>This is the story of how two children become men, and arrive to face their destiny: each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They would both one day shape the history of entire cultures, influence galactic politics, and have an empire at their feet. Behind all such men, there are trials and glory, bloodshed and skeletons in dark closets. But there is always a beginning, steeped in a significance that is only recognizable from a great distance of time: a time when a seed becomes a flower, to flourish or wilt.

Conall Hux’s first memory is of his mother. Sometimes, when he has had the rare occasion to smell salt sea air, or feel sand beneath his feet, his memory of this moment sharpens, and he can almost picture the way she looked. She is standing upon the shore of a vast ocean, sandals laced up along shapely calves which are exposed by the wind. Her powder blue dress with its flowing sleeves dances madly, as though she might take flight at any moment. Hux recalls the look on her face, and his older self reads feeling into the expression: loneliness, determination, resolve, all blending into the stern set of a fine jaw, unblinking green eyes, lips bearing no aspect.

Conall is playing in the sand, stripped of his own tiny boots, heedless of the water staining his pants. His mother is not paying attention to him, and so he is molding the wet shore earth, black as obsidian, into a small fortress. The water washes up, takes down a wall, and so his small fingers scoop a moat about his creation. The sea swells upward again, and fills the moat, overflows, and topples another wall. Frustrated, Conall rises from his crouch and smashes the fort with one foot.

“No,” his mother says, and Hux recalls the way her tone is not angry, but flat. It is denial, simple, and firm.

He looks up at her, squinting in the sunlight, standing no taller than her waist. Her red hair is bound in plaits, stirring at her shoulders.

“You will do it again,” she says. “You will find a way.”

Conall does not argue. Even at the age of four, he knows this will not avail him. And so he sets to the task. First, he composes his four walls and encircles it with a bigger moat, and yet still it overflows and the foundations sink and are dragged back into the sea. Then he tries building farther inland, but here the sand, dryer, will not hold form.

All the while, his mother watches, arms crossed, offering no advice: neither praise nor admonishment. At last, Conall’s eyes trip upon a piece of driftwood. It is as large as himself, gnarled except for one, rounded side. He drags the wood down to the breakline, and plants it firmly. Then he scoops out wide moats, deep, and waits for the waves to break again. They collide against the wall he has created, spraying cool mist, and trickle harmlessly into the new divides.

With a smile to himself, Conall sets about rebuilding his fortress: four walls, a tower. He takes his time, smoothing the sides, using the width of his hands to ensure they are evenly spaced. When it is complete, he glances up at his mother, grinning, pleased with himself.

It is the first, and one of the only times, that Conall remembers his mother smiling: “The face is a window into the soul,” she would teach him. “You must guard it well.”

Now, however, she gazes down at him with an expression that is proud, perhaps the only expression she allows herself beyond impassivity. She cards through her son’s hair, red like his father’s, and says:

“Well done, _mo curadh_. If the enemy is at your gate, you make sure your gate is stronger.”

Conall is too young to understand “enemies” at this age, though he will soon, in ways he will never forget. But he understands his mother’s pet name for him, _mo curadh_ : “my champion.”

It is not until later, until he is old enough to understand enemies at the gate, and to turn them aside just as he had turned aside the sea that day, that she begins to call him “ _mo ri_.”

My king.

* * *

 

 

He is six the year his father teaches him of bias and that the bonds within a family are sometimes little more than skin-deep.

Conall’s two siblings, Brendol the Second and Aric, ages thirteen and eleven, look like their mother: dark hair and clear ivory skin and blue eyes. This is testament, his father says, to the fact that their mother, who had died birthing Aric, was of old Imperial blood, with royal ties to a loyalist family.

Conall is short for his age, and Brendol despairs he is destined to remain so due to his mother’s questionable heritage. She was just a lively fuck that got herself a child on him to rise above her station, he says. And damn her for it.

When Conall asks his mother in curiosity, she merely frowns, with a dark glint in her cold eyes, and tells him that beauty makes men into clay, to be shaped and fired at will, and one uses the tools at their disposal.

This particular memory is of an evening aboard the space station where Conall Hux would spend most of his youth before the academy on Arkanis. His father and brothers are in their suite of rooms, larger than most because of his father’s work, and they are getting ready for a ceremony to inaugurate a program which is his Brendol’s child as much as any of his sons. Conall has listened, and asked questions, and been rewarded with the understanding that there will be an academy where children will be trained from birth to glorify the doctrine of the First Order.

Dimly, Conall realizes that by association, he is part of the First Order, and that he will be among those children trained on Varan Four, which is their destination in just a few months time. He is excited by the prospect of belonging, for his mother tells him that his father could never afford to lose face by denying Conall the opportunity. He remembers feeling an overwhelming sense of pride, in both his father and himself. Brendol may say that his second wife is of humble birth and possibly even Republican blood, but Conall is nevertheless his child, and his duty. Though duty does not equate to love.

Conall is standing in one corner of the room, out of the way, as one never sat in his father’s presence. He is watching as his father pins ribbons to Aric’s uniform, and he recognizes some of them. There is the red and white bar denoting the First Order, and the red, black, and white that symbolizes candidacy for officership. Brendol the Second sports even more, including the blue and red of flight training, and the green for marksmanship.

Conall has handled these tiny symbols before this night, sneaking into his half-brother’s drawers and withdrawing the cases that now lay open on his father’s dressing stand while he pins them proudly on his eldest sons. He has imagined being allowed to hold a firearm, to take it apart and see how it works, and has imagined the great carriers that dock at the station, and wondered how they navigate the stars.

“Sir,” he ventures, as his father begins to take medals from a drawer and pin them upon his own uniform. He never calls him Father. “May I go with you tonight?”

Both Brendol II and Aric turn and immediately burst into laughter, and his father pauses and stares at him with open-mouthed amusement. The expression fades quickly to disdain.

“You must earn your right to wear the uniform, boy. I may have to recognize you, but I owe you no honors.”

That is the end of that conversation, as all three went back to their preparations for the ceremony, and Conall once again ceases to exist.

His small dreams of standing in glory alongside his family are smashed, and he slips out of the room before any tears can fall, biting his lip so hard against the disappointment that it bleeds. He seeks his mother in her own quarters; he enjoys her company, not because she comforts him, for she is not particularly affectionate, but because she speaks to him as an adult. Even at the age of six, this matters to him.

“He said no, didn’t he?” she asks as Conall enters, and there is a tone of bitterness beneath the words.

“He says I must earn it,” Conall tells her, flooded with confusion about how he must go about such a thing, or if he possesses the ability. If he cannot follow in his father’s footsteps, what is his purpose?

“Mmm,” is Namira’s response. “I have something for you, _mo curadh_. Come here.”

Conall obeys, and to his delight, his mother presents him with a uniform unlike the plain black garments his father and brother wear, their austere cut uplifted only by formal colors for ceremony.

This outfit, which she helps him tenderly into, is made perfectly to bolster his spindly, six year old frame in such a way that it accentuates his long legs and is broader at the shoulders. They feel padded, and the sleeves are wider, to hide his narrow arms. After he is clothed in this base layer, Namira adds another. This one is a great coat, etched in red and gold and silver, bands of rank standing out on the left sleeve. There are three of them, one wide, two smaller, and along the wide red band his mother has sewn tiny, perfect constellations in glimmering silver thread.

At last, she smooths her hands over his hair - unnecessary for it is perfectly groomed as always - and takes a final strip of gold cloth, its breadth no more than an inch, and ties it around his head, knotting it at the back.

“What is this, mother?” he asks, holding an arm up to study the curious banding on the sleeve. Conall has studied the First Order denotations of rank, and this one he has not seen before.

“Wait,” she says, and calls out softly to the cabin control to dim the lights to half. Then Namira takes him by his small hand and leads him across the room to the viewport. It is a luxury, this floor to ceiling window onto the everyday business of the space station, affording a view of its constant activity against the backdrop of the moon it orbits and the planet burning far below.  

“Now look,” Namira says.

Conall looks. He sees a cruiser pass by, smaller transports zipping along arbitrary lanes of travel, an interstellar vessel docking at the insect-like durasteel station.

“No, son,” his mother says, tracking his eyes. “Look farther.”

Conall glances up at her, confused, but sees her eyes trained on the great void of the galaxy beyond. Stars glitter, constellations with no names.

“Now see yourself,” Namira tells him.

At first, Conall does not understand what she means, but then he registers that she had changed the lighting in the room before this moment, and that when he likes to watch the space station, he always turns the lights down so that he might see without a glare.

Without his reflection.

So Conall refocuses his eyes, and suddenly he is seeing what his mother wishes him to see. Superimposed upon the stars, blending with the great blue and white and red of the Rodan Nebula, is Conall’s own reflection. A small boy wearing the uniform of a warrior of the First Order.

“One day,” Namira intones quietly, reverently, “all that you look upon will belong to you. You will rise above those who do not credit you. You will crush those who defy you. The universe will bow to your will.”

Conall Hux gazes out into that universe, trackless and wild and beyond his imagination, and he lets it into his soul. He _sees_. He sees the future: streaks of red hurtling across the sky, ripping the very ground from beneath his feet, filling his chest with an emotion he does not understand, for it is too huge. He sees a towering figure, blues and greys melting into a throne, a hurdle, an adversary, and he senses a figure clothed all in black, faceless, but burning red inside. There are thousands of ships, explosions, legions encased in white, and in the end, one man. One man aboard a ship greater than Conall has ever imagined, gazing into the stars, looking back at him.

It is himself, a mirror of the child who stands here at this viewport light years and decades away. He hears his mother’s words again, an echo as though traveling to him from that other time: _the universe will bow to your will._

Looking into the eyes of this man in the future, he believes it.

* * *

He is nine years old when he enters the newly constructed academy on Varan Four, and learns what it means to be alone.

This first year is considered anathema for the structure of the program that will train both officers and his father’s stormtroopers. Only this first year are children accepted into the academy that do not come from fully conditioned rearing, raised from birth within the arms of the machine, weaned on propaganda. Still, only certain children are accepted, specifically those of higher ranking officers in the First Order. His brothers take every opportunity to remind him that he is lucky that he bears the last name of the Commandant, for it would bring shame upon his father were he to deny his child entry, even with the questionable lineage voiced within the walls of their home.. By this age, Conall has learned to understand that it is not only his mother’s relatively unknown origins, and the question of Republican loyalists in her past, but also the suspicion that she got with child through design, to trap their father into forging a marriage and thus secure a future for herself.

It does not take his sharp mind to realize where the rumors about himself begin once he has moved into the barracks for his age group. No doubt, his half-brothers have whispered to their fellows, and this, combined with Conall’s small stature, serve to invite the ire of his classmates and his teachers alike.

His classmates are able to bully him as they see fit, without repercussion, for there is a philosophy within the program that multiple levels of interaction, from interpersonal to authoritative, will weed out the weak. His meals begin to be swiped from the table during cafeteria time, clattering to the floor and presenting him with the option of picking them up and consuming them, or going without food for the sake of pride.

At first, he chooses pride, for his mother has taken great pains to teach him this concept, and his father exemplifies it. It is a weapon, she says, which is to be kept close to the chest, used to drive oneself toward higher purpose, though she cautions him not to be blinded by it. It is a bitter pill to swallow however, and he takes to stealing small things from the cafeteria like a cellophane of crackers, or a piece of fruit which he smuggles into his dorm room, hiding under a blanket to wolf the meager food down as his stomach pinches with hunger. It nags him, that he has become a thief in order to better emulate his father, angers him that he must endure this treatment with stoicism lest he besmirch his treasured family name.

The effect of his struggle with pride comes one afternoon during sparring practice. Fighting with swords is an arcane concept, but used to teach balance and quick-thinking, anticipation and how to read faces and body language. Conall has had the lessons of a courtesan from his mother by this age, and it never occurred to him to think all children were not taught these things. He is always observant, choosing to listen rather than speak, to remember that his mother had shown him that one day he would hold power in his palm.

This morning, however, Conall has eaten only sparsely in three days, his sleep fitful. He is facing an opponent in the training yard that is several inches taller than he and broader by far, and this is not unusual. The instructors seem to take personal interest in either seeing him fail or making his trials more difficult so as to hone something from him that will garner the approval of the Commandant.

Standing with his small weapon in a stance of readiness, he begins to circle his opponent slowly, knees bent and crouched at the waist to minimize his vulnerability. The sun is rising, and Conall is endeavoring to put it to his back, and into his opponent’s eyes. It is easy enough; as is often the case, his opponent if more focused on who Conall is and what defeating him represents, rather than the situation.

He sees the usual signs of an impending advance: a foot shifts forward in the sand, weight planted on the right knee, an elbow tilts outward, shoulder rising, and his opponent’s forehead puckers with a sign of concentration. Conall prepares himself, crossing his sword over his body and readying an easy counterattack to this advertisement.

When the other boy lunges, however, something happens that Conall does not expect. While he steps back to accept the blow, parrying and pirouetting to bring himself an easy victory with a mark to his opponent’s back, he is suddenly faced with a sensation he has not experienced before. The quick twirl leaves his mouth dry, and his vision spotty, and he is so preoccupied trying to catch his balance, to keep from tumbling into the dirt, that he entirely misses the need to react in the next moment.

The other boy recovers quickly enough from the parry, and whirls on him, slashing out at the blinking, nearly swooning Conall with an angry riposte. While the weapons that they traditional fight with are dulled, the boy strikes with such intention that it slices into the fingers of Conall’s hand when he brings it belatedly up to ward off the blow.

The spar is immediately called off, and Conall’s opponent is whisked aside as the commanding attendants scurry to discern the severity of the wound. Despite the disregard he is held in by classmates, it will not do for him to be maimed as a result of incompetence or lack of oversight on the part of the Commandant's staff.

It is not a life threatening wound, but it deep enough to sever nerves below two knuckles. The pain is startling, and he’s never seen this much blood: immediately coating his palm and dripping to the ground. He has not eaten in days and the shock of it causes him to sway, and then to drop into the dirt. Dimly he hears laughter, before everything goes black.

The next day, and the day after that, Conall endures that his classmates continue to walk by and shove his meal trays onto the ground, scattering the contents across the duracrete floor. It is then, as he moves from the table to the seat himself among the remnants of his meal and proceeds to eat from the ground that he understands his mother’s lesson.

Pride, he realizes, is a double edged sword. On one hand, it can be a great strength, allowing him to hold his head high and not be overcome with shame at mere words. It can help to keep clear thought, but on the other it can be a weakness, when he denies himself what he needs in order to survive for the sake of upholding an impression of his character.

 _The man who deserves to be the most proud of himself,_ Namira had said, _is the one that others cannot anticipate by his actions._

It does not bother him when others laugh as he eats his meals from the floor, and he does not outwardly smile when one day, he is left alone to eat from his tray at the table. Internally, he is pleased. He has allowed them to bring him low in their eyes, to become invisible, so that when the time comes, they will not see him coming.

* * *

Conall is thirteen when he makes a friend. Or so he thinks.

The boy is the same age as Conall, and is the first person in a long while to only call him by his first name, the name his mother gave him. They are in the same age class, and he is tall, dark haired, with blue eyes and freckles like his own. His name is Tyran, and Conall remembers thinking of him as beautiful.

They meet in a course on applied physics, and Tyran suggests one afternoon after class that they study together. Conall is surprised at the suggestion, for over the course of the years few people have approached him, and it is not in his habit to make an effort to reach out. He prefers reading and meditating, studying math and solving equations to challenge himself, rather than engaging in social activities. Truthfully, people make him nervous.

Conall finds, however, that he enjoys Tyran’s company. He inspires new feelings in Conall that are outside of his comfort zone and beyond his understanding, and he is fascinated by it. He feels like every word he speaks to Tyran is a secret, even simply talking about physics with heads close in study hall, or when Tyran will sit in his room, their shoulders touching as they are propped side by side on Hux’s bed, watching holos of speeches given by leaders of the First Order and whispering about the future.

They talk also of the other students:  Tyran is witty, and deft at impersonations, and is the first person to make Conall laugh since committing his future to the academy. Tyran even does an excellent impression of his father, and his daring and willfulness make Conall’s skin feel warm in a strange way.

Conall does not object when one afternoon, closeted in the dormitories, Tyran shyly twines their fingers and asks him what he wants to accomplish after the academy. He remembers staring at the way their hands look laced together, and how it makes him feel needy and dizzy, and vaguely considering what that means. He tells Tyran of his vision, because the boy makes him feel safe, and he trusts him. He tells him of looking out of the viewport on the space station years ago and seeing himself aboard a great starship, the leader of the galaxy. Tyran does not laugh at him, but squeezes his hand tighter.

They share this tentative, blossoming thing for months. Conall is both giddy and distracted with it, though it comes to a shattering halt at the end of term.

It is precursory verbal examinations for their final project in class, and Conall is sitting in the front row, watching with a mixture of pride and something more as Tyran takes his place before the class to present his concept and recite his methodology for the year long project that each student has been tasked with. His warm feelings turn to ice as his only friend proceeds to outline the design of a weapon to be carried by stormtroopers to combat the lightsaber in hand to hand combat: a revolutionary defense against force-users. It is a design that Conall himself has come up with, always fascinated by designing weapons, and shared with no one but Tyran over the course of their friendship.

Tyran does not even glance at Conall as he gives his presentation, his face pinched and guarded, though Conall himself is unable to control his own expression. It is appalled and hurt, lips parted and eyes near swimming. If he could have leapt up and run from class he would have, so that he could hide in a corner and scream.

He suffers through it silently, however, allowing Tyran to steal his thoughts and display them for everyone in open mockery of all they have shared. Then class is over, and Tyran has not once returned his stare. When Hux puts a hand out to stop him as they are filing out of class, his erstwhile friend shakes him off with vitriol and turns a vicious expression on Hux.

“Don’t touch me,” the boy hisses. There is something wild in Tyran’s eyes, something desperate and afraid, and Conall would not think upon that expression until years later and imagine what it meant. Tyran has shared with him that his father is an abusive man, and that he expects nothing but the highest marks from his son. However those were to be earned.

Conall lets go, and stands in a mixture of shock and bone-wrenching agony as Tyran walks away, and once again, he is alone.

That night, Conall lies in bed and allows himself to cry, because fighting it is too difficult for his raw spirit. He does so silently, face buried in his wet pillow, hands balled into fists. Gradually, the agony drains away, and is replaced by cold, implacable rage.

Slipping from bed, he makes his way barefoot and silently out of the dormitory, and down the hall. There are no wardens, for there is no expectation of disobedience, and so it is an easy enough task to make his way to the laboratories where students store their projects. Tyran had openly lamented that he and Conall did not share the same lab time, but now he is sure that Tyran requested the schedule.

He lets himself into Lab B, and has little trouble locating the prototype of the invention that Tyran stole from him. It is a distinctive shape, hidden beneath a white sheet. Tugging the sheet aside, Hux realizes he must give Tyran credit for the wherewithal to have assembled the design, and as he runs his fingers over it, examines the interconnected pieces and the construction, he decides it is not a poor effort. What Conall cannot summon, however, is forgiveness; he cannot abide cheating, clawing one’s way ahead upon the back of others.

Grasping a multi-tool, he unscrews a plate on the side of the weapon and pops the panel off. As he suspects, there are the wires that connect to the powersource. His slender fingers deftly interchange wires, so that the repulsor energy beam that should spark to life at the end of the weapon will instead overcharge the core, thus causing the weapon to explode. Replacing the plate, he carefully wipes his fingerprints from the metal, and from the multi-tool, though there is likely no need. Everyone will simply suspect that Tyran’s construction was flawed, and will dismiss it as careless and inept.

Conall goes back to bed, afterward, and sleeps soundly, if not peacefully.

The next day, he hears the explosion from his own lab, where he is finishing his own project: a revolutionarily small cloaking device that he hopes will one day be useable on armor and small ships, making insertion on enemy planets undetectable.

He hears later that morning that Tyran was killed when the poorly constructed weapon blew up in his hands and that others were injured as shrapnel ricocheted across the room. Conall finds that his death does little to eradicate his hurt, and in some ways it deepens it, but his fury is abated in fire and destruction.

Conall’s epitaph to his first and only friend is to later deliver a report on what caused the weapon to fail, and a better model. He calls it the Z6: the first letter of his friend’s surname, and the number of months Tyran had managed to fool him into believing he could blindly trust someone offering friendship.

In the First Order, it did not matter who created something first, only who made it the best, and so he was given credit for his design. The weapon would go into circulation as part of his resume, and as his secret tribute to the person who taught him the most intimate form of vigilance.

* * *

Conall is fifteen when he becomes Brendol Hux’s only child, and he becomes more than just the invisible third child to his father. It is the first time that he truly comes to his father’s attention.

Brendol II and Aric have completed their academy training by this time, and are for Conall  just distant memories. He had seen them on campus from time to time during his early years, but Aric had graduated four years before, and Brendol II two years before that. As far as Conall knew, they had been assigned as officers aboard ships that carried troops to spread the influence of the First Order and to harvest planets for his father’s stormtrooper program.

Conall did not realize that his father had placed both his sons on the same ship, and it was a decision that made little sense to him. But then, his father remained a mystery: a dim figure in the ether of his universe who did little more than monitor his academic success and training reports with the odd word of back-handed encouragement along the lines of “you’d better keep this up.”

The story Conall is able to piece together from the shocked whispers in the hallways among academy students, and the conversations overheard by his instructors, is that Brendol II and Aric had both been on the ground, conducting a raid that should have been routine on Damara Three. It seems that the leaders of the community had intelligence that the First Order was making runs planetside in the sector, and had no intention of allowing their children to be taken from them. They had organized a resistance that was unexpected and brutal, and a landmine had taken the life of the younger Aric, while Brendol II was hit with blaster fire.

Brendol II returns home sometime later, and Conall’s mother writes to him of his condition, saying that the blaster fire had taken him fully in the face, and that he has lost sight in both eyes, as well as come through disfigured. She writes that his father visited once, in such a rage at his eldest son’s incompetence and his inability to protect his brother that he left the young man in a state of despair so deep that he refused experimental medical treatment that could have restored his eyesight.

His mother writes again several weeks later to tell her only child that Brendol II has taken his own life.

Conall recalls feeling little emotion over this, beyond a sense of loathing. For all his pompous standards, his father had raised sons both incompetent and weak, and he would never allow himself to sink to such standards.  


It is this same year that the Commandant gradually begins to take notice in his youngest son. There are awkward family dinners where his father attempts to speak to him about his schooling, and goes so far as to ask him about his goals. Conall feels his mother’s eyes on him as he describes his desire to command, to stand upon the bridge of a great star destroyer and bring the pathetic resistance to its knees. He leaves out the culmination of his dreams: that he will one day have not only the rebels beneath his boot heel, but the universe.

Hux is proud of his achievements; indeed, he is first in his class. There is nothing that he has not learned to do, from weapons training and combat, to engineering and battle tactics and theory. Much of it he has found easy, in fact, though particularly engineering. He has earned a nickname in the academy he imagines Brendol Sr. has heard, related to his affinity for complex explosives, though Hux’s true love is not in firing weapons, but in creating them.

His father attends Hux’s graduation, and affects more interest in his son and his accomplishments than ever before. He even makes an ashen-faced effort to appear as proud as is proper as he pins ribbons, long awaited, to Conall’s chest for his excellence in engineering, his marksmanship, his top marks in theory. In the end. He remains after the ceremony by Hux’s side, hand clamped hard to his smaller son’s narrow shoulder, and announces to all that stop by to congratulate Brendol on his success rather than Conall, that his son will be taking over Brendol’s role as Commandant some day. It is the thing farthest from Conall’s heart.

Conall is allowed leave after this ceremony, and he visits his mother in the small campus house she shares with his father. She, at least, is truly proud of him, and has prepared his favorite meal, and opened a bottle of wine to share with him: his first taste of alcohol. Namira asks him of his plans, and how soon he will be among the stars, and so Hux tells her Brendol’s words: that he will never get off this planet.

Namira’s face grows cold for a moment, and says: “We shall see about that.”

Brendol joins them late, and sits down to an awkward dinner. He attempts to make conversation with his sole heir, but it is painfully obvious that they nothing of one another. Conall finds himself wishing that he could be grateful for this change, but he knows it is forced, for among his talents are reading faces. Brendol’s smiles never touch his eyes, which are creased and strained. His words are stiff, rote, and only mildly interested, in so much as it concerns Conall being groomed to one day run the academy in his father’s stead.

His mother plies him with a glass of wine, rubs his shoulders as he sips it, and glances at Conall with her green eyes over his father’s head. She watches her son, drinking in the features that are so like her own, even more so as he is nearly grown into a man: angular, refined jaw, high cheekbones, pale eyes and soft, nearly blond eyelashes.

She is chattering away about nonsense, distracting Brendol from his awkward interrogation of Conall, who is picking at his dinner and enjoying his first glass of wine, though with tension in his belly. He is hardly listening to her, waiting for his father to erupt in some diatribe about how Conall is not his brothers, and can never live up to the name Brendol was forced to give him for the sake of honor.

Then suddenly, Brendol is coughing, holding a fist to his mouth while Namira continues to massage his shoulders, as though she does not notice. Conall, on the opposite side of the table, sees the pinch in his father’s facial features, the drawn brows and wide eyes, and notices that Brendol’s hand comes away from his lips smeared with blood.

He immediately whirls on Namira, who takes several steps back. Brendol Sr. lurches from his chair, snarling a wet sounding “ _YOU_ ” which turns into another fit of coughing, and before he can take a single step, he collapses to the floor.

Conall stands abruptly, staring across the table at the crumpled form of his father, and his mother who stands over him without a wisp of concern on her features. After a moment, Conall slowly circles to the scene, as Namira is bending down to check his pulse.

When she glances up at Conall, who is staring a mixture of feelings he cannot yet put words to, Namira says: “Now there are no barriers between you and the stars. Your future is your own.”

“Mother…” Conall begins, fear for her safety stirring in his breast, as well as something deeper and vile that he cannot process at this moment. This is not a crime that could be hidden, not with technology that can detect any foreign substance in an autopsy.

Namira shakes her head. “You will help me. Burn it down, and make it look like an accident.”

 _Burning it down_ is not as logical as it seems, for emergency authorities would arrive far sooner than it would take to incinerate a body. He has to blow it up, and for that to happen, they must be nowhere near the home.

“Help me,” Conall says, and together they drag the prone body to the kitchen. It is surreal, and Conall’s chest is filled with a mixture of shock and regret.

It is easy enough for him to engineer such destruction. On Arkanis, many homes still use gas powered stoves, and so he turns one burner on after laying his father in the kitchen floor. Then he tugs the refrigeration unit away from the wall and strips several wires so that when the compressor turns on, the spark will ignite the gas in the room. It is simple enough.

Then he and his mother leave the house, taking no possessions. No memorabilia of their former lives, no childhood reminiscences, nothing for the future but time. She tucks her hands into her son’s arm, who stands now as tall as she does, and they walk across the complex to the officer’s lounge, for Conall had become, upon graduation, a warrant officer. They seat themselves in a booth in the corner, and order a bottle of champagne.

They both hear the explosion from a half mile away, and the force of it ripples across the surface of Hux’s champagne flute. He glances at his his mother, and she raises her glass in a salute. Conall hesitates, catching those cold green eyes, and wonders not for the first time of her past, her motivations. Truly, is it her goal to see her son rule the universe? Does she believe that? Slowly, he raises his own glass, and clinks it to hers, and sips.

His father’s death is ruled an accident, though for a while the Hux name was considered cursed. It would still be some years before Conall Hux took to the stars, but he made the most of his time: he takes over the design of the stormtrooper simulation program, which he will oversee for the next four years.

It is the first step on a path that will bring him to the notice of the Supreme Leader, and would bring him face to face with the man who would forever change his life: the harbinger of his destiny.

* * *

 

 

KBB Art by the lovely[ Pinetato](http://pinetato.tumblr.com/) (thank you so much sweetheart it is perfect!)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this before Bloodline was released. I elected not to make canon compliant changes.

Ben Organa Solo is five years old when he first realizes that he is lonely. 

He is playing alone in their skytower, seated before one of the floor to ceiling windows that is such a luxury in the impossibly cramped living space on Hosnian Four. He has spirited back one of his favorite toys that his father, for some reason, tries to hide from him whenever he sees Ben with it: an action figure of a Jedi Knight, complete with hand-sewn robes and a plastic blue lightsaber that actually glows! He has the dubbed figurine “Anakin,” and is currently battling a legion of rather sadly disproportionate stormtroopers, sweeping the from the window sill upon which Ben is perched, scattering to the ground with Ben’s imitation of the sound a lightsaber makes. 

He’s only ever seen a lightsaber once, when his Uncle Luke showed him his own, but he of course hadn’t let Ben hold it. And his mother had told him to put it away after only a few seconds of gazing at Ben’s fascinated face.

He hasn’t seen his Uncle Luke in more than a year. In fact, he rarely sees anyone beyond his parents and Chewie. Very rarely will he see other kids: when both of his parents are busy or offplanet, they leave Ben with an old family friend, Wedge Antilles, who is not married and has no children of his own. 

Ben supposed he likes Wedge ok. He at least plays with him, like his father does when Han is home. They watch sporting matches on the holoscreen, and Wedge lets him eat whatever he wants with the promise that he won’t tell Leia. 

Anakin is sweeping another round of stormtroopers into the floor and boarding his space shuttle (he’s lucky he’s a Jedi because he has to ride on top of the shuttle, being too big to fit inside), when Ben hears the commotion in his parents’ rooms. He freezes, clutching the toys to his chest, and feels his heart hammering. 

Ben has heard them fight before, and he knows what is usually means: his father being gone for a long time, his mother being quiet and sad, and a lot of time on the couch with Wedge, wondering why his family doesn’t want him. 

Right now, their voices are rising, loud enough to be heard over the music playing on the radio, and Ben slips off the windowsill to the thick carpet, back against the wall, waiting. Sure enough, not long after the voices quiet, his father comes out, jerking the door open and leaving it standing that way. There is a bag slung over his shoulder.

Ben’s eyes instantly fill with tears at the sight, and he bites his lip against outright sobbing. Han is marching toward the front door when he seems to catch sight of Ben out of the corner of his eye, and he stops in his tracks. Dropping his bag to the floor, he strides with those long steps to his son, and crouches down before him. Han cards through Ben’s long dark locks gently. 

“Hey kid. Look, I’ve got to make a run in the Falcon. It’ll only be a coupla weeks. Fast as light.” He gives Ben a lopsided smile. “Ambassador stuff.” Han’s days as a general of the Republic are over, but he still runs trade negotiation missions: his mother says no one can out-talk his father. 

“Don’t go,” Ben begs, dropping Anakin and his shuttle and lurching forward to wrap his arms around Han’s neck. 

“I have to kiddo. I’m sorry. I’ll bring you back something cool.” Even as he’s saying this, he is peeling Ben off him, settling him away. Han was never good at goodbyes, and in later years he wouldn’t bother with them at all. 

That night, his mother scoops him off the floor where he’d been crying, and tucks him into bed. His fondest memory of her is that she would tell him stories, though Ben would not realize how edited they were. She tells him of his grandmother, the Queen of Naboo, and the war fought there against the Trade Federation. She tells him how his grandfather grew up on a desert planet just like his uncle Luke and was good at building things. 

What Ben doesn’t know is how editing are the tales of the Death Star, the war against the Empire, and never tells him that Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader were the same man. She never suggests that he might one day be a Jedi like his Uncle, and never tells him that she is force sensitive herself. They would not even send Ben to formal school, like his peers, so that his heritage is kept from him as long as possible. Instead, he would have protocol droids for tutors, programmed to redirect certain questions.

Leia reads to him this night, soothing his tears over the departure of his father, and steering away from questions he has about why Han has gone away again. The next day, Leia takes him to Wedge’s cramped apartment, saying she has business with the senate she must attend to. 

Before they leave their quarters, Ben tries to find his Anakin figurine, but once again, it is gone. The only toy he takes with him is a model of the Falcon, and he cries the whole shuttle ride on his way to be left behind as his parents travel the stars.

* * *

He is seven years old when one day, his father leaves and takes Ben with him. There is no talk of a “mission” this time, and this exodus is for once not preceded by a fight between Ben’s parents.

They leave the apartment hand in hand, with Han asking him what he has done with his recent week long stay at Wedge’s apartment. Ben chatters about watching the holovid and seeing cartoons about X-wing pilots and hearing Wedge’s stories. He tells his father he wants to be a pilot when he grows up, and receives a squeeze on his small hand that Ben takes for approval. 

Ben had just turned seven a month ago, and his father had not been here for that day. Han had promised he would be, but tried to explain he got held up by some “club” thing that Ben didn’t understand. Explanations don’t matter to Ben at this age, just facts. Promises broken. Feelings. He had waited for Han that day, then cried that night  and  refused to participate in any of the things Leia had planned for him. 

But he is also quick to forgive at this age, so desperately did he crave attention and approval when it is offered. He allows Han to attempt to make up for his absence this day without complaint, and they wander the city streets together. It is a rare treat for Ben, seeing others peoples, other species, lights and sounds.

He is astounded by all the bright colors, the whizzing speeders, the noise, and it all seems magnified in some way. The voices are such a cacophony of tones and languages that he is almost overwhelmed by the input. It is not until later that he will realize that there is a reason he can understand the various species as they chatter in their own dialects. He has surely not learned this from being vigilant at his studies. It is only later that he will realize that many of the voices he hears are not voices at all, but thoughts. 

Han buys him candy, and a toy X-wing with wings that really fold, and they watch a holofilm together. This is not the most special aspect of the day for young Ben Solo. His true surprise is that over the course of the evening, his father has been leading them gradually to a part of the city dedicated to hangers for ships. They take and elevator up together, and then spill out onto a sight that takes Ben several long moments to fully grasp.

When he realizes what he is seeing, he is tearing across the hangar bay. Chewie is waiting there, and stoops to sweep the gangly seven year old off his feet as though he were nothing, and Ben wraps his arms about the Wookie to receive the crushing embrace before rushing toward the ship.

Han trails after Ben, saying: “Well son? Is she has beautiful as you imagined?”

Ben approaches the underside of the hull, stroking the metal surface with all its nooks and crannies and scars. The  _ real _ Millennium Falcon, ship of legend. His  _ father’s _ ship. 

The hatch is open, and Ben wanders inside, too in awe to speak. His father and Chewbacca follow, and Han takes his hand again and leads in through the ship, pointing out different parts which Ben will never remember, showing him all the places to hide, telling him about the time he and his mother and his Uncle Luke hid inside a giant space worm on an asteroid (a story Ben never gets tired of hearing).

Finally, they make their way to the bridge, and Han settles in the captain’s chair, patting his lap for Ben to join him. He does so excitedly, scrambling up with long legs and skinny arms, until he has his back firmly to his father’s chest. Chewbacca settles beside them in the co-pilot’s seat. 

Han reaches around Ben and presses a button, and the hangar door begins to slide upward. Ben feels a thrill that is like being plunged in chilly water from the inside out, thinking that his father is going to take him into space for the first time.

“Are we flying, Dad?” he manages to get out, twisting to look at his father.

Han pauses for a moment before answering, a look on his face Ben doesn’t comprehend, but senses is regret. Han has something to hide. 

“Not tonight son,” he says with a sorrowful smile that he twists into something brighter as Ben’s young face falls in disappointment. “But look.” 

Han points, and Ben’s eyes follow his gesture. For a moment, Ben is truly stunned, for they are very high, above many of the city buildings. Facing him beyond the hanger is the darkness of space, a smattering of stars that bleed through the overwhelming light of the city planet. A great moon hovers before them, and beyond that, the golden glow of another planet with its concentric rings. Even though Ben would experience the vastness of space much more potently in years to come, with its countless stars, nebulas, planets, and moons, this is still his first vision from the inside of a cockpit. The first suggestion that he will one day sail the skies, and he gapes in wonder.

As though echoing his thoughts, Han says: “One day she will be yours. One day you will sit in this seat and find your own path.” 

Ben notices that Han does not say anything like “follow in my footsteps,” but he is too consumed with the vision that Han is painting. He stares out the viewport, imagining himself in this chair, a co-pilot by his side, and suddenly he is seeing something else. 

He is seeing the bridge of some massive ship that he cannot define, for he has never seen anything like it. All around are colors, blending into the vision in blues and reds and blacks. He is standing before another viewport, grey robes trailing to his feet. There is someone at his side, a person he does not recognize, but as Ben is trying to make sense of this, the man turns, and Ben is pierced with a set of green eyes, pale and cold. Ben knows in that moment that  _ this _ is his future. Not the ship he sits in now, not the one he stands on in the vision, but this man.

Ben says nothing of this to his father, not denying that one day he will, truly, fly the Falcon, for he does want to disappoint him. He plays along, and Han lets him pretend to access the controls, not seeming to question (or to ignore) the fact that Ben knows what everything does. Perhaps Han thinks this is a lesson Ben paid particular attention to from his tutor droid. 

It is a fun day, a day in which Ben forgave Han for being absent much of his life, and allowed himself to dream that he would grow up to be like him: to live a life of carefree adventure and excitement. 

It is the last happy memory he has of Han Solo.  
  


* * *

 

Not even a week later, Ben realizes what his parents have tried to hide from him. Or hide from themselves. 

It happens innocently enough. They are preparing a family dinner, which is an odd enough thing for them to be doing. Leia is a fair cook, having learned from her adoptive parents an age ago, and Ben knows she enjoys it when he shows interest in the process. It’s one of the few things, actually, that Leia Organa seems to want to teach him. 

Ben knows she serves in the senate, but she never wishes to talk to him about her work, and she and Han always stop talking about it whenever Ben is in range to hear. Ben once asked about it, about whether he might be a senator when he grew up, like his mother, but Leia is adamant that he would dislike the work and he would be very bored. This makes sense to Ben at the time and erases that idea from his mind, because boredom is something he is very familiar with. 

They are in the kitchen, and Ben is in charge of making the batter for the fried chicken while Leia is slicing the meat. Ben is taking extra care, because he very much wants to please Leia. He craves praise in a way that is almost desperate, for having so few people in his life from whom to seek it. 

He reads the recipe, and combines the ingredients, proud of himself for his ability to measure things, unable to resist the urge to call his mother’s attention to each thing as it goes into the bowl correctly. 

The last items to go in are two eggs, and then he begins to stir the mixture. He is tall enough for the counter, though the bowl is rather large, and he’s on his toes to fully blend it. What happens, he is not sure, but some combination of vigour and unfortunate angles suddenly topples the bowl and his near perfect mixture from the counter. 

It happens in slow motion for Ben. The first sensation is a moment of utter panic, wanting so much not to fail, to please his mother, that he  _ wills _ this not to be happening even as he is stretching both hands out to try to catch the bowl. 

Before his fingers reach the glass, however, it is as if time stops. The yellow bowl is upside down, thick batter just beginning to slough over the side toward the floor. He is so intent on this  _ not happening _ that he doesn’t consider laws of physics overturned, and merely reaches out with relief, grasps the bowl, and turns it right side up. Only one fat dollop of batter splatters to the floor, and he grins up at his mother.

“Oh  Ben…” she says, and her eyes crease. 

Ben’s forehead crinkles and he looks from his mother’s confusing expression to the batter that did spill before he caught it, and he begins to say “ _ But it’s just a little bit, it won’t even matter…”  _ when he realizes what he has just done. 

Looking back at his mother with wide eyes, he whispers: “I’m a Jedi.”

It seems like such perfect truth to young Ben, though little does he know that it is not then, nor will it ever be reality. His mother does not acknowledge his statement beyond petting his hair with moisture in her eyes, which Ben takes as praise and happiness. 

They finish dinner with Ben babbling away about all the things he’s going to do, and attempting to levitate things until his mother firmly tells him to stop. That it’s dangerous to use the force so casually. Ben thinks this is stupid, but he obeys, for the moment.  

Later that night, Ben is in his room, practicing with his newly discovered skill, levitating stormtrooper figurines with fascination, and he hears his parents arguing in the room next door. The argument persists for what seems longer than usual, and he catches the words “Luke” and “training” and “Vader.” 

His parents never look at him quite the same way after this. He has grown up thinking that the ultimate achievement was to be a Jedi knight, though it seems that rather than be proud of his force sensitivity, his parents fear him for it. One day, thinking there must be something bad about Jedi his parents aren’t telling him, he asks his tutor droid (his only real companion) to tell him about that curious word his parents had been discussing: Vader. 

The droid responds curiously:  _ “Information is not permitted on this subject, Master Solo.” _

“Override,” Ben tells it. 

“ _ Override function is disabled.” _

“Tell me about Jedi, then.” 

The droid tells him what he already knows, the same drivel that everyone has heard, and Ben is frustrated, and finally tells it to stop. He is alone in the apartment with the droid, and he is aware that one of its functions is to guard him. Not to let him out of its sight and to inform his parents if he attempts to leave or deviate from his routine. Not that it would matter, since they are never around.

It is the first attempt he makes to use his new powers for his own agenda. He holds out a hand and imagines crushing the internal components of the droid, visualizing them, squeezing his hand. To his surprise, the droid splutters something about a malfunction, begins to smoke, and then the golden eyes fade and the voice drones to a halt. It slumps against the wall, motionless. 

Ben drops his hand, and for a moment stares at the droid and feels bad. He wouldn’t have ever referred to the thing as a friend - its programming was base, and it never deviated from its insistence on lessons, always redirecting Ben’s curious questions to the subject it was espousing. 

The feeling passes, replaced by anger at his parents for what he is beginning to think is some purposeful misleading and disregard for his powers. He goes into his mother’s room, and locates her spare datapad, and turns it on. There is a password, and he almost throws it across the room in frustration, but then decides to try to determine it. He punches in several ideas, but nothing works.

Then, in the back of his mind, something whispers  _ seek the answer _ . 

It is less like a voice in his head, and more like a sudden realization. He does know of the sorts of skills Jedi are said to possess: great martial artists who anticipate their opponents, the ability to use telekinesis to lift objects as great as ships, the power to make others forget what they are told, not notice them, to see the future, and to read minds.

This last is what he believes will hold the key. He concentrates on his mother, trying to imagine her at a senate meeting, but he cannot visualize a place he has never seen, and so instead he pictures her face. The hairstyle she’d worn when she left that morning, the dress she’d had on. 

_ Ben _ . 

The word resounds through his head like a bell, so clear he thinks his mother is calling his name, and for a moment he is frightened he has called her attention and given himself away, so he pulls back, fingers shaking. He sits on the bed for a moment, still holding the data pad, and then it comes to him. 

He types in his name, and the data pad flares to life. 

Ben spends the next few hours before his mother comes home scouring through holofiles and data entries, reading about the history of the Jedi order, the Rebel Alliance, the Death Star, the Emperor. He watches a holovid of his mother and father and his Uncle Luke at a ceremony, and sees medals hung around their necks. He reads the story about it, about how all three of them had been part of a mission to destroy the massive weapon of the emperor. He reads that the emperor was once a senator, and that Darth Vader had fought at his side, and eventually was rescued, or “brought back to the light” (whatever that means), by Luke.

What interests him most is when he reads that Darth Vader was once known as Anakin Skywalker. Ben thinks of the figurine he loves so much, the one his parents like to try to spirit away from him, and his young mind begins to put the pieces together. Leia had never mentioned that Anakin’s last name was Skywalker, and he had always assumed that it was Amidala, like his grandmother. He’d known Leia was adopted, because he had three names: Ben Organa Solo, and Leia had much preferred to tell him stories of her adoptive parents. . 

Ben is entranced in watching holovids of Vader, snippets caught on camera over the years and filed into history. He is mesmerized by his flowing cloak, the shiny black helmet, the raw strength that his grandfather exudes. Why have they kept this from him? Because Vader was evil? Do they keep Ben from other children because they are afraid  _ he  _ is evil, like his grandfather? Is that why they act as though they are afraid of him, and why they don’t want to be around him?

_ They do not want you to know your own power.  _

The words are a whisper in his mind, almost a subconscious thought that Ben does not at this time separate from his own dawning realizations. But he believes it.

And it makes him angry.  
  


* * *

 

It is Ben’s anger that eventually drives Leia and Han to make the decision to send him to Luke to train him, for his anger is, they tell him “not good for him.” 

His is ten years old when his insubordination and his temper finally cement this transition in his life. After discovering the truth about who he is, Ben had begun to refuse to accept his parents’ stories, and becomes increasingly argumentative. He feels betrayed. He demands to be trained as a Jedi, demands his way, and when they refuse, he threatens them with the powers he constantly draws upon, constantly works with on his own. 

If he did not get his way, he would rip pictures off the wall, until finally his mother stopped hanging them back up. When his father would attempt to leave on missions that got longer and longer each time, Ben would hold the door closed with all his willpower, until his small body was exhausted, and Han would still leave. 

They have his tutor droid repaired, and Ben destroys it again when Han and Leia refuse to override the programming that left out reality, even though he rails at them that he knows it anyway. 

And so they finally, reluctantly, agree that there is no choice but to train him. At first, Ben hears them argue that Leia should be the one, to teach him the basic skills that he needs, but these are Han’s words. Ben hears Leia say that even at his age, Ben’s powers exceed her own, for she has never trained formally, and that he is already dangerously angry. Ben does not know what his anger has to do with it, for he feels it is deserved, after having been lied to for so many years. 

The ship ride to Ossus, where Luke’s fledgling Jedi academy is quartered, is a lonely one. Ben’s parents accompany him, but they are quiet, choosing to say their goodbyes in their own way: Leia squeezing him to her chest, Han’s hand awkwardly on his knee with fingers too tight. It is something that Ben will never understand: their reluctance to be close to him, that their fear  _ for _ him was not the same as fear  _ of _ him, or rejection. 

He brings nothing with him, as Luke instructs, and with this Ben does not argue. He is far too excited to be hurtling toward what he imagines as a great destiny like his grandfather’s. He imagines Luke welcoming him with the open arms his parents never seemed to, of finding kindred spirits, of making real friends: boys and girls his own age that he could talk to, play with.

This, however, is not what Ben finds on Ossus. 

The first disappointment is Luke, who greets the shuttle with folded arms and a pinched expression not unlike the one Leia makes when she is impatient. He does not offer Ben a hug, or place a hand on his shoulder in greeting or encouragement. Luke merely leads Ben from the shuttle to the dormitories in the large stone temple that would house him for the next five years. He offers advice on settling in, and gives him instructions upon attending trainings and lessons, and departs, as though they are not kindred. 

The second disappointment is that Ben finds he does not make friends easily. He is too young at ten years old to understand that the excessive isolation of his early childhood was hardly enough to teach him how to interact with others closer to his own age. For one, Ben does not possess a filter between his brain and his mouth, and says what he thinks. He is proud of his ancestry, and loves to remind others of the prowess of his grandfather and his parents and even of Luke, despite Luke repeatedly telling him such talk is not appropriate. Ben doesn’t understand “bragging,” when his peers tell him he does this. Ought he not to feel this way? Did his family not change the course of history, and is he not to follow in their footsteps? 

The third disappointment, and perhaps the most difficult to stomach, is his own failure. Luke tells him that he is too old, and that his powers have gone too long unhoned, and that he does not see how he can train Ben. Ben is not allowed to practice with most of the other students after several are wounded by both Ben’s wild telekinesis and by his overenthusiasm in combat training, which he can never seem to reign in. Eventually, he is given only a handful of partners he can work with: older students whose force sensitivity is more refined, better able to control Ben.

It is after only a year of this that Ben realizes he has simply traded one prison for another. 

* * *

 

He is fourteen when he finds the helm. 

It is on a long, hot day, when steam rises from the ground, and electrical storms criss-cross the horizon. Luke is practicing techniques with the younger students indoors, and Ben is supposed to be meditating with the rest of his class. Ben, however, does not find meditation useful: his mind is always busy, too unquiet, too full of bitterness to clear and seek that emptiness and lightness of spirit that Luke preaches upon. 

Leaving his peers and the temple behind, Ben walks up a winding path into the dripping jungle trees, to the hut where Luke has made his home. He pushes open the simple wooden door, and steps inside, eyes flicking over the meager belongings. 

There is a cot, a small hearth and kettle, a wooden cup for tea: truly austere. Except for the box. The box is ornate, compared to the rest of the hut. It appears otherworldly, made of a type of wood that Ben has never seen: reddish and smooth, as though glossed by the touch of hands many times over the years. There is a simple wooden latch, and Ben finds himself kneeling, and flipping it open. 

Pushing back the lid, he holds his breath, not knowing what he expects to find: some secret insight into his taciturn uncle, perhaps? 

The twisted, scarred husk within is the last thing he imagines. He recognizes it immediately, for how many times has he looked upon the holovids which record images of his grandfather, Darth Vader, the man once known as Anakin Skywalker. The helm has been melted by a great heat, the eye sockets dripping, the mouth warped into a silent scream. It sits upon a burlap bag, filled with something soft and uneven, like dirt perhaps.  _ Or ash _ , he imagines. From the great pyre on Endor, at which his parents and Luke had stood as Vader burned.

Ben’s heart thuds in his chest to see it, and he stretches out a hand to touch it. Tracing fingertips along the warped surface, he finds it strangely warm, and there is a faint vibration. 

_ “BEN.” _

The voice is so clear in his mind that Ben thinks Luke has caught him, and he snatches his hand away, whirling from his position on his knees before the box. The door, however, remains closed as he’d left it, and there is no sound but the wind in the trees outside. 

Finally, Ben turns back and gazes at the twisted helm, and once again lays a trembling hand upon it. 

_ “My grandson,”  _ it whispers.  _ “How strong you have become.”  _

_ “ _ Grandfather?” Ben responds tremulously. 

_ “Yes, Ben. You are my flesh and blood.”  _

The words fill Ben’s empty heart with fire, with hope, to hear someone claim him as their own. To hear his very own grandfather, reaching out to him from beyond the grave, recognizing Ben’s strength. 

It is Vader, or so he believes, who guides him after this: no longer Luke. His grandfather comes to him in his dreams, and whispers of the things that Ben will accomplish in his life. He explains to Ben that Luke has been wrong about so many things, and always was, and so will never be as powerful as Vader was, or as Ben himself will be. He tells Ben that Luke is making the gravest of mistakes in teaching the students here that the must put aside the darkness and seek only the light, for that will never bring about balance to the Force, which has always been Vader’s goal. The destiny of the Skywalkers. Ben’s destiny. 

Vader calls him to the stars. It is he who tells Ben he must stop this travesty upon Ossus, and he tells Ben that he must create his lightsaber (which thus far Luke has forbidden him to do), and he must cut down those that are a danger to the mission that Ben must accomplish: fulfilling what Vader began so many years ago before he was destroyed by his own family. It is his grandfather that guides him through the process of creating the lightsaber with the kyber crystal that he helps Ben to find. It is Vader that shows him which of the students of Luke’s school to cut down, and which to keep at his side. Those that survive are those that Luke, or fate, had chosen to be his only combatants and peers during his five years upon Ossus: those Ben could not overpower with his untameable will. It is a source of pride for Ben that Vader declares them the Knights of Ren, the knights of the people, and bestows the term Kylo, leader, upon Ben. 

Ben does not remember his feelings about what Vader called him to do: whether he felt regret or sorrow at slaying children. In fact, there is very little about it that he recalls at all, as though someone or something else had done this deed through Ben’s hand. The last memory he does recall from that fateful day is fleeing up the slope to Luke’s hut, and taking the redwood box containing his grandfather’s helm, with tears streaming down his cheeks.

How the ship that took them offworld arrived, Ren, as he must now know himself, did not know. It was simply there, and he and his six knights boarded it, and Ren never looked back. He had taken his first step upon the path he was always meant for, to finish what his grandfather started.   
  


* * *

 

Kylo Ren is twenty years old when he arrives on the  _ Harbinger _ , an Imperial-class star destroyer, to vet a young Senior Captain who has piqued Snoke’s interest. It was years ago that Vader had led him to Snoke, and now his grandfather was all but silent as Snoke’s vision for Ren was encompassing and consuming. Ren had traveled the galaxies in search of force sensitive children, slaying them, for they did not suit Snoke’s purpose, and while Ren asked his grandfather if this was his destiny, Vader reassured with only whispers to do as he is told, and to have faith.

As the shuttle docks, Ren reviews the data pad for the pertinent information on the Captain: Conall Hux, aged twenty-five. He is very young to have his own command, but his record is impressive. 

Hux graduated top of his class at the academy, and is credited with the invention of the Z6 Riot Control Baton at the tender age of thirteen. His file seems to show a passion and affinity for weapons, and there are several blaster prototypes and a sniper rifle accredited to his name. Perhaps most notably are the four years he spent perfecting his simulation program for Stormtrooper combat training. 

Ren skims over this, not particularly interested in the details of the program, for in his opinion simulation was no preparation for combat, but it seems that part of the reason Hux has obtained a command years before many First Order officers is that his stormtroopers are the most efficient on record. 

This fact is part of his ruse. He is playing the role of a planetary governor who is appealing for the protection of First Order, in exchange for resources and manpower. The deal was negotiated by Ren himself months before, but the transition kept secret until this could played out. 

Shifting to his feet as the hatch hisses open, Ren finds himself vastly uncomfortable in the traditional garb of this planet. Abandoned are his robes and the helm he prizes so, replaced by tan leather breeches that leave little to the imagination, and a red shirt with ridiculous flowing sleeves, cut low at the throat and tucked into a dark sash wrapped widely around his waist. Perhaps most annoying about this disguise is the jewelry: silver and gold rings, a necklet that feels too tight, and a silver ear cuff. He had drawn the line at wearing his hair up, pierced through with silver hairpins, but actually doesn't mind the kohl around his eyes. It feels a little like mask.

He steps to the hatch and reminds himself to adopt the carriage of dignitary, not stalk like a warrior, even though the thought makes him almost sneer before he catches himself and composes his face into one of disinterest. Ren isn’t sure why Snoke thinks he is good at these kinds of missions, but the fact that he can read anyone’s mind or bend them to Snoke’s will with merely a thought outweighs, Ren supposes, his propensity for impatience and irritability. 

He is accompanied by two of the Knights of Ren, and a smattering of locals from Hakanna, from whence Ren is pretending to hail: they will add authenticity with their customs and language. Ren did not bother to read about any of it before he boarded ship for this mission: he merely observed during negotiations and then filed it away in his force eidetic memory. It’s an elaborate scheme for a simple purpose, and Ren had dared to question Snoke about his reasons for this charade. Ren could have spent five minutes in the room with this man to glean his loyalty to the First Order, to sense his purposes and secret wishes. But Snoke was adamant, for some reason, that Captain Conall Hux must not know that Ren is force sensitive.

Ren stands framed in the open hatch, scanning the impressive array assembled to greet these faux dignitaries. There are divisions of stormtroopers, battle armor gleaming perfect and white, weapons at parade rest. Before them, there are officers in black, and at the forefront of them all is a young man that Ren can only assume is Captain Hux. The man stares forward with a tense jaw line, a tiny twitch in a fine cheekbone beneath a smattering of freckles, hat set severely straight upon his head. Immaculate uniform. Perfect posture, with hands clasped behind his back.

Ren casts out for the man’s affect, and is met with  _ irritation, impatience, better things to do,  _ and Ren almost smiles.

That is when the young Captain’s eyes flick up to Ren, meeting the knight’s. Those eyes send a chill through him that he cannot explain, and for a moment Ren can only stare, hoping that his face does not betray his bewilderment. 

And then it comes to him. He has seen this face before. These same piercing eyes, pale green like a cat above the same black uniform. Had Ren been anyone else, he would swear that was impossible, for he had seen this captain in a vision, nearly ten years before, when he was still Ben Solo, aboard the Millennium Falcon, as that seven year old boy gazed into the heavens and the future. 

Only it was not this moment he had seen, but something yet to come. A sense of destiny far greater than anything Vader or Snoke has suggested awaits him.   

What he senses at this moment is that somehow, Snoke has made a great error in setting this collision course.

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't possibly thank my betas enough for their help and support. You know who you are. I love you guys.


End file.
